Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Rail Repairs

Once the dust settled over the Halloween events, concentration was turned to the rail in Kelly Yard. Before the final weekend of the Halloween events, a compromise joint (60 lb rail to 40 lb rail) in Kelly Yard broke. It was apparent that this joint has broken before, because it was a welded joint. Xian Clere, Superintendent of Track, discussed possible repair options with a variety of people and finally decided on removing the welded joint bars, manufacturing new compromise joint bars in the shop, and then installing the new joint bars. This will be a much more permanent fix than has happened in the past.

Inside the main hall this weekend, everyone was hard at work decorating for Winterfest. The O Gauge layouts were put together. The massive G Gauge Table was set up. While the foot print of the table is the same size there is an extra 18 square feet of layout space. George Morris, Matt Januska, and Carolyn Levesque worked on Santa's Village inside Car 36 and the large display cabinets. Sheila Numrych was busy at work on the window displays that will see a change from last year's Winterfest. Galen Semprebon, Bill Yungk, Larry Lunden, and numerous other volunteers were seen helping out in the main hall as well.

About this Site

"Connecticut Company" is NOT an official blog of the Connecticut Trolley Museum. The articles posted within this site are the views of the contributors only and do not necessarily reflect the views of the organization.

This blog site is named after the original Connecticut Company or ConnCo, which ran trolleys throughout Connecticut from 1910 to 1948. ConnCo was a subsidy of the New Haven Railroad. By 1948, ConnCo converted all trolley operation to buses, and the era came to a close in Connecticut.

However, eight years prior, in 1940, the Connecticut Electric Railway Association was formed in an effort to preserve a streetcar from Hartford. In 1941, CERA saved its first car, ConnCo 65 from the scrapper. When trolley service ended in 1948, CERA saved 7 more ConnCo cars.

Today, the Connecticut Trolley Museum is the oldest incorporated museum dedicated to railway preservation in the country. Although not the largest, CTM's has a collection covering many of the major types of trolley cars including streetcars, interurbans, elevated cars, and work cars from the Northeast, Midwest, Deep South and Internationally as well.